


Reclaimation

by Nochi



Series: Rita's Successor [2]
Category: Power Rangers (2017)
Genre: Brainwashing, Gen, Hallucinations, Post-Movie, Unreliable Narrator, battle at the center of the mind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-14 07:57:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11778753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nochi/pseuds/Nochi
Summary: At the end of the day, it's about who you are, not who made you.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A commission from Tumblr, and a sequel to boot! Sam is the commissioner's OC.
> 
> Also, shoutout to my beta, Mala, for reading 15k of a fandom she's not in because I forgot how spelling works.

"Left!"

A blur of pink to one side and the creature went down hard, dust kicking up around it as Kimberly drove her knees into its neck. It superficially resembled a deer, a large buck, but its skin was grey and its body almost malleable to the touch, like if you tried hard enough you could pinch and squish and reform it into another creature entirely.

"Up top!" Another, similar creature sailed over a nearby fallen tree and leveled its jagged, almost rock-like antlers towards Zack. With an unearthly bellow it charged, head down, and Zack caught it by the antlers before they could spear him, twisting its neck and body to throw it to the ground.

It kicked its legs wildly, struggling upright, and one massive hoof caught Zack in the chest, throwing him backwards and knocking him off-balance. He slipped, landing hard on the ground.

A third, previously unseen creature came out of the trees, bellowing in that same unsettling, reverberating bass tone, and leaped for the prone figure in black armor.

"Shiiiiiii - "

"I got it!" A green-clad figure, almost blending in with the surrounding forest if not for the opalescent shine of the armor, leaped up from a crouched position, diving for Zack and the attacking monster. She caught it just below the neck with a savage punch, rolling it over in midair.

It flailed, not knowing what its attacker was or where it came from, and one massive hoof slammed into the visor of her armor. She watched in a detached sort of shock as a small crack appeared in the...glass? Whatever alien armor visors were made out of.

The creature fell to the ground, twitched twice, and died, its body crumbling like sand. Or, more accurately, dried-out clay. Amidst the powdery remains were tiny, shining flecks - gold. The remains of the creature that had nearly destroyed the harbor town of Angel Grove only a few months prior.

"Ugh." Kimberly stood, brushing the remains of her own opponent off of her armor with distaste. "I hate this. They were _deer._ I _like_ deer.”

"Yeah, why can't something small ever get possessed?" Zack muttered. "I'll fight a squirrel. I'll fight ten squirrels. I'm tired of things with _teeth_. Teeth and big stompy feet and claws. Sick of it, man."

"Remember the bear?"

"Don't remind me of the bear," Zack said immediately, shuddering. Kimberly laughed, not unkindly, then looked over at Sam.

"You alright?"

"Yeah." Sam had her visor up, and was rubbing at her eye. "That thing actually cracked my freaking helmet. I didn't know that was possible."

"Are you okay?" Zack asked immediately, moving towards her, but she waved him off.

"I'm fine, I'm fine. I think I just got possessed putty deer sand in my eye." She blinked over and over, trying to convince her tear glands to start up and wash whatever was causing the gritty sensation out of her eye.

"Gross," Zack said, with feeling. "Come on, maybe Billy's got some eye drops or something."

"Yeah." Sam squeezed her eyes shut one more time, trying to flush out the granule. It stayed resolutely where it was. Sighing, she gave it up as a lost cause and dropped her cracked visor, taking off through the forest towards the ravine.

* * *

In the months since Goldar's defeat, more and more creatures had been turning up, resembling the "putty" soldiers Rita Repulsa had used in her initial attempt to take over the Earth. A few were actual putties, golems that had fallen inactive when Rita had been flung into space, then re-animated by the scattered pieces of gold infused with Rita's sinister intent. The rest were normal animals, who had eaten plants infused with the gold, where it had multiplied like a virus, taking them over and transforming them. That was their best guess, anyway, with what few remains they had been able to bring back to the ship for Alpha to analyze. Putty dust was difficult to collect once the creature had disintegrated, and they didn’t exactly cooperate while alive.

Sam tried very hard not to draw a connection between herself and those creatures. She'd taken up something of Rita's, as well - the green power coin the witch had used in her own time as a Power Ranger - and been transformed. For the better, she was pretty sure, but sometimes it was hard not to look at the grey-skinned beasts and think _that could have been me_. Oh, a deer or even a bear didn’t have the will to resist, and Sam had technically been found by the Rangers before the full extent of Rita’s coin had even had a chance to take hold. But the thought still lingered, as hard as she tried to ignore it.

They reached the underground spaceship that served as their command center - a sentence that never failed to bewilder Sam, even all these months later - and dropped their armored forms. Sam hoped, as the green outer layers fell away, that the visor would be repaired when she morphed again. She was pretty sure there weren’t any space blacksmiths within driving distance.

“How’d it go?” Billy asked from the far side of the room, where he was standing with Alpha.

“Deer,” Kimberly said sadly.

“Giant murderous deer,” Sam corrected, tugging at her eyelid. It _itched_. “Horror movie deer.”

“Sam got punched in the face,” Zack said. “By a horror movie deer foot.”

“Yeah, about that,” Sam added. “Hypothetical question: can our armor be, y’know, repaired?”

Alpha stopped whatever he was doing with Billy and _stared_ at her, bulbous optics flickering slightly. Behind him, Zordon’s face appeared along the wall with a rippling motion.

“Your armor should be indestructible,” Zordon said, peering down at Sam. “What happened?”

“I got kicked in the head by a putty-deer, like Zack said. My visor cracked. Not, like, _shattered_ , just. A crack.”

“I know how you feel about this comparison,” Kimberly said, raising a placating hand. “But Rita’s armor was...wrong. Different from ours,” she amended quickly, with a look at Sam. “Is there a chance it affected the…” She waved a hand in the air, as though trying to summon the word she wanted.

“Stability?” Billy offered, and Kimberly pointed at him.

“That! The stability of Sam’s armor?”

Alpha made a low humming noise, resting one hand on the center of his head plate, where a human would have had a chin. “The problem is that all of this is utterly unprecedented. No Ranger ever defected the way Rita did. A power coin has never been tainted the way the green coin has been. We just...don’t know.”

“As happy as I am to be everyone’s guinea pig,” Sam said, cutting off the ongoing discussion. “Could I get some eye drops or something? I’m starving and I don’t think In’n’Out’s gonna serve me looking like a low-rent pirate.”

“In’n’Out has served worse than you,” Zack assured her, even as Billy made a noise of affirmation and went digging in his bag. “I know, ‘cause they serve me.”

“Besides, you can just eat one of the forty power bars you’ve got stashed away,” Kimberly teased.

“Shut up,” Sam muttered, tilting her head back to drip the saline solution in. But her grumbling was good-natured, as was Kimberly’s teasing. It was friendly. These people were her friends.

Sometimes that was as bewildering as the underground space ship.

 

* * *

After promising to come back the next day and let Alpha inspect her armor, Sam took off through the woods, only pulling out the power bar after she was out of Kimberly’s sight. The teasing might have been friendly, but there was no sense in just handing her ammunition. And she really was hungry.

She stopped running when she reached the edge of town, crumpling up the power bar wrapper and tossing it in a nearby trash can. She had to dodge a couple of “do not cross” ribbons on her way through town - reconstruction of the town was ongoing, and seemed to encompass the entirety of Angel Grove, sometimes. Usually when she was trying to get home. Or, she noted with an internal sigh, when she wanted food from one specific place, it would inevitably have every entrance blocked off by trucks and cranes and people in hard hats. She could jump over all of them, from right here, flat-footed, but she was fairly sure that would draw attention. Besides, if all the entrances were blocked like that the place was probably closed anyway.

“Ramen it is,” she sighed, turning on her heel and heading towards home.

Construction thwarted her there, too - it seemed like they were desperate to get everything done before school started back up. But she did eventually make it to her house, doing her customary check in the carport for her father’s truck. It wasn’t there, meaning her father was still at the docks. Which meant just a few more hours of freedom.

She let herself in, dropping her stuff by the door, and headed for the kitchen. She hadn’t been joking about being hungry, either. She was always hungry, it seemed like - that, at least, hadn’t changed when she picked up the green stone. But it was easily fixable. Her father had long since accepted his only child’s appetite and metabolism, and bought in bulk.

Sam turned on music, some local top forty whatever. It didn’t matter, it sounded good, it _felt_ good as she wiggle-danced her way around the kitchen, starting a pot of instant ramen. She couldn’t do this when her dad was home. The music, maybe, if she wanted to endure a thousand comments about “girly bullshit”. Never the dancing. Especially not the way she’d learned she liked to dance, which was with her whole body. And that wasn’t even taking into account -

“Sam?”

_Shit_. Sam slapped at the radio, silencing it, then even more frantically at her wrist, and the small device she wore there. A sharp electric sting, just as her father strode heavily into the kitchen, and she was leaning languidly against the counter, waiting for her water to boil.

“Hey,” her dad grunted.

“Hey.” Lower voice, prompting a chorus of _wrong, wrong, wrong_ in the back of her mind. “Didn’t hear the truck.”

Her father swore as he shrugged off his heavy coat. “Transmission blew, tow place is closed. Got Frank to drive me home. What’s wrong with you?”

Sam paused. She’d been itching her chin, where a light beard now sat. “Nothing.”

“Well quit it, you look like you’ve got bugs.” He stomped off to his end of the house, and Sam rubbed fiercely at her chin. The device on her wrist put out a hard-light hologram that mimicked Sam’s previous appearance - which was to say, that of a teenage boy. The face and body she’d had right up until that morning on the mountain. It was tangible, meaning she could feel the illusion sitting on top of her skin like a full-body costume, and every time she used it she wondered how she’d ever worn a beard before without losing her mind. Rita’s coin and the curse she’d placed on it with her dying thoughts had changed Sam’s body, even beyond the enhancements that came with being a Power Ranger. They’d started off looking for a way to change her back, but none seemed available, and Sam was growing increasingly more okay with that as time went on. She liked this body, she liked how people treated her now, and was more comfortable in her own skin than she’d ever been before. She just needed the hologram emitter Billy and Alpha had rigged up to get around her dad. (And probably at school, once they went back. She was trying not to think about that too much.) It rankled, the old irritation at having to pretend and suppress rising up, but at least now it was temporary. There were people who knew who she was and how she was and didn’t expect anything else out of her.

The train of thought had been a quiet backing track as she finished making her ramen, and as she scooped the noodles into a bowl, Kimberly’s voice came back to her.

_Rita’s armor was wrong_. A wave of irritation rose up in her, and she tamped it back down. It wasn’t _Rita’s_ armor anymore, was it? Sometimes she thought she’d never get out from under the weight of her predecessor’s reputation. She knew Jason felt the same way, but that was mostly Zordon’s fault for pushing the “leader” bullshit on him all the time.

(The five of them had agreed, it wasn’t eavesdropping if one of them was shouting and the other was a giant face with no volume control.)

And the line about the power bars. If Sam still matched her ID card, would Kimberly have commented on her eating habits? Or was it just what she’d originally thought: friendly, non-gender-specific teasing?

“What the hell,” Sam muttered, rubbing at her still-irritated eye. Kimberly had corrected herself, and wouldn’t have made fun of her for eating if she was from Mars. “I’m being an asshole. I need to eat.”

So she did. She felt better. But the irritation still lingered, both under her eyelid and in the back of her mind.

* * *

_Dark. Cold. Hundreds of thousands of miles in every direction. More dark. More cold._

_In the dark and the cold, Rita was laughing._

_Her voice whispered and slithered, like eels, like poison._ My champion. My warrior. My destroyer.

_High, cruel laughter, echoing, somehow, though the dark and the cold and the void._

Sam shot upright in bed, gasping for air, as though she had been the one trapped in that endless expanse, and not the spectre of Rita that still lived in her mind. The little piece of Rita’s will that she kept locked away, that took advantage of the negligence of sleep to come out and play.

“Fuck,” she whispered, pulling her knees up to her chest, resting her forehead against the heels of her palms. She still had the nightmares occasionally. Less and less often, it seemed, as time went on, as she grew closer with the other Rangers. But when they did happen, they were terrifying, like she was losing herself to Rita’s control. Like she was the betrayer everyone originally feared she would be.

“Just a dream,” she whispered. “Just a nightmare. _Fuck_.” A few deep, slow, breaths, returning her heart to its normal pace, slowing her racing thoughts. She laid back down, pulled the sheets up over her.

She didn’t sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

They met up again the next day, as they did most days, in a gazebo near the edge of the park, where it almost met the forest. It was easy to slip unnoticed into the trees from there. Trini was helping Sam pull her hair into a ponytail.

“I could do it at home,” she admitted. “But I’m always worried it’s gonna stick out the back of the hologram.”

“The field extends several inches around you,” Billy assured her. “I had to compensate for your - well - you know - “

“Thank you, Billy,” Sam said wryly, the statement punctuated by a huge yawn. “‘Scuse me.”

“Late night?” Jason asked. Sam shrugged, trying to ignore the echoes of laughter in her mind.

“Yeah, kind of.”

“You can nap in the command center today,” Jason told her. “I’ll take your rounds. Alpha wants to inspect your armor, anyway.”

“Like I can sleep with those little robot bug eyes in my face,” Sam muttered.

Trini tugged sharply on her ponytail, making her give a little yelp of surprise. “Alpha’s adorable,” she said with an air of finality, moving around to take her seat at the table. “And when he’s done staring at you, I’ll show you this neat little loft-type place I go sometimes. Perfect for naps.”

“Is that where you go when we can’t find you?” Zack asked sharply.

“Dude, that ship goes on for, like, _miles_. You never thought about exploring it?”

“You gotta tell people before you wander off, crazy girl!”

Their bickering faded into the background as Sam drifted into her own thoughts. Trini had been the last to trust her, when she first showed up. She knew now that Trini had been personally attacked by Rita, that the witch had tried to prey on her as some sort of apprentice. But at the time, the other girl’s belligerence had stepped on every last nerve Sam had, like there was nothing she could do to convince Trini she _wasn’t_ Rita. And now they were doing each other’s hair.

_Trust is a hard thing to earn_ , she thought, watching Trini and Zack without really paying attention to them. Images flashed in her mind - throwing Trini across the room, completely overpowering her, making her feel small and weak and useless. _And so easy to break. Wouldn’t she be easy to break? You know now that she’s mostly talk, baby bird puffing itself up to look strong, it would be such a small thing -_

“Yo, Sam!” Sam looked up sharply, shaken out of the spiral of her thoughts by Zack rapping his knuckles on the table in front of her. “You coming?”

Most of the group was already approaching the tree line. “Yeah, sorry. Guess I just...spaced out for a minute.” She grabbed her bag and stood, walking across the green with Zack.

“You gotta go to bed at night,” he chided her. “You’re gonna fall asleep mid-punch. Just…” He mimed throwing a punch at her, then went limp, flopping over her shoulder and snoring expressively. She laughed, squirming out from under him,  and the two broke into a run to catch up with their friends.

* * *

“Hmmmm.”

  
“Alpha, I have come to care for you as a friend and compatriot. But if you _hmmm_ at me one more time, I’m gonna turn you into a roomba.”

Alpha looked at Sam, optics swiveling, and tilted his broad, flat head. “What’s a - you know what, I don’t want to know. Anyway, this is much more concerning.” He turned and walked towards the large center console of the room, pulling up some kind of display.

Sam stood from her crouched position, retracting the still-cracked visor of her armor. “What’s wrong?”

“Your armor should be nigh-indestructible,” Alpha said. “It’s like a - a diamond. The number of things that can affect it is incredibly small, and most of them don’t exist on this planet.”

“And yet…” she gestured at her helmet.

“And yet,” Alpha echoed, sounding frustrated. “And yet I can’t figure out _why_!”

Sam opened her mouth to say something encouraging, but a huge yawn escaped her instead. “...sorry.”

Alpha waved a hand at her, still jabbing his other hand irritably at the console interface. “Go, go. I got all the readings I can get, I just have to figure out what to _do_ with them.”

Sam dismissed her armor and grabbed her bag from where it sat against the wall, heading back into the depths of the ship. Trini had shown her the area before heading out to find more putty-creatures: a kind of loft space above what she assumed was an engineering station of some sort. She jumped up easily enough, finding a small nest of blankets and scattered paperbacks. A small smile touched her face - this was clearly _Trini’s_ space, and she had opted to share it with Sam.

_Wonder what’s in here I can blackmail her with_. The thought came, unbidden and unwanted, and Sam shook her head hard, as though she could physically fling it away from her.

“Sleep,” she muttered. “I’m just tired and being an asshole. Sleep will help.”

She laid her backpack on the metal floor and tried to shuffle it into an acceptable shape before laying her head on it. She was still getting used to sleeping in a bra, but she eventually managed to squirm into a position that felt comfortable. With a little huff of a sigh, she closed her eyes, trying to relax the frown off of her face.

She woke up some time later, blinking in the darkness. She didn’t think she’d ever seen the ship this dark, but somehow it wasn’t surprising to her. Who knew what was powering this thing, after all; they had to conserve energy.

She jumped down, making her way through the darkened hallways, navigating by the small slivers of light coming from further down the hallway. She heard voices; the Rangers. The command room was at the end of this hall.

She continued through the dark, footsteps echoing slightly. She could see them in the room now, though they couldn’t see her. That changed the moment she stepped into the light of the room.

Five heads snapped around, six if you counted Alpha, seven if you counted Zordon’s face blooming onto the wall behind them.

“What the - “

“How - “

“Rangers! You have to morph!”

“We - we can’t!”

She drank in the distress in their voices, letting it fill her like ambrosia. An outstretched hand and Blue fell. Yellow after. She hated leaving good work undone. Black next, as he leapt at her. Pink. Cruel, high laughter filling her ears. Her own. Joy, rapturous, like she hadn’t felt in ages. Possibly ever.

Red, as he stared in anguish at his fallen team. The stupid robot flitting about in the background; an afterthought.

Then, standing proudly in the middle of the room, head high and hand outstretched, teeth bared in what might have been a smile on anyone else’s face.

“Why,” Zordon asked, and his quiet, broken voice was all she wanted. It soothed every frayed nerve, all the eons of anger and bitterness and the drive for conquest that had sustained her.

“I win,” Rita said, as the wall exploded into a million shards of light.

* * *

Sam sat bolt upright, barely repressing a scream. She was sweating, tears were streaming down her face, her entire body was rigid with terror.

That had been her. Yes, it had been Rita, but it had been _her_. She had felt every exultant emotion, the power flowing from her fingertips. The rush of joy and victory as the Rangers - _her_ Rangers, her _friends_ \- had died, one by one.

She was shivering. She wrapped her arms around herself tightly, as though she could physically hold herself in place, stop the shaking.

_I have to tell the others_ , she thought, almost simultaneous with _I can’t tell the others,_ and the latter was the thought that stuck. If they didn’t trust her before, they’d lock her up after this. No, she had to deal with this on her own. She had to figure out what the hell was going on, and fix it, before whatever was in the back of her head shoved its way to the front and started killing.

She slid down from the loft, dragging her bag with her, and headed down the hallway with it slung over her shoulder. She was less than a dozen steps away when pain exploded from the center of her forehead, radiating out through her skull and making her grit her teeth against a scream. She pushed herself off the wall she had staggered against and forced herself forward. Had to get out of the ship. Had to get home. Maybe home was safe, Rita didn’t have any grudge against her dad. That she knew of.

“Hey Sam.” _Shit._ Zack was exiting the cave passage as she was entering it, shaking water out of his hair. “Woah, are you okay?”

Head down, jaw clenched. Pain and anger, neither of them hers but that didn’t stop her from feeling them keenly, along with the almost irresistible urge to reach out and _kill_. The worry in his eyes was an insult, his outstretched hand an assault.

Sam muttered an apology, unaware of whether or not it actually made it past her lips, and sprinted away.

* * *

There were five texts on her phone when she got to the edge of town. Fifteen by the time she reached her neighborhood. Twenty by the time she got inside and slumped against the door. She glanced at the screen with one eye, covering her throbbing left eye with her palm. _If you don’t answer we’re assuming the worst and coming over_. From Jason. Of course.

Irritation surged through her, even as she tried to fight down the foreign impulse. How _dare_ he, Rita’s voice sneered. How _dare_ he issue such an ultimatum. Who is he, to threaten me this way?

“Shut up,” Sam mumbled, pressing her hand against her eye so hard colors bloomed under her eyelid. “Shut up, shut up.” She fumbled at the phone one-handed, finally giving up and laying it on the floor to hunt-and-peck the letters. _Migraine. Sorry._ There was no way he could know what the apology was for, but it soothed her a little to have said it.

She staggered upright, navigating through the house on autopilot, leaving the lights off in deference to her pounding head. At least the migraine part hadn’t been a lie. It was a will thing, she’d decided. Rita’s will was in her, and she just had to prove that her own will was stronger.

The thought brought mocking laughter rolling through her mind, and she was chilled by the thought that it wasn’t just Rita’s leftover malice, it was literally a _piece of her mind_. Rita’s actual consciousness, piggybacking on her own.

“I can do this,” she muttered, opening the door to her room more or less by falling on it. “I can still do this.”

She kicked a clear spot in the center of her bedroom floor (swearing vociferously when one of the items in her way turned out to be a very solid computer tower case), settling down with her legs folded. Reluctantly, she pulled her hand away from her eye, resting both palms on her knees. She’d been working on this with Trini, a little - meditation, sense of self, connecting to the world by connecting with your true self. It was, admittedly, an incredibly neo-hippie thing to indulge in. But damned if it hadn’t helped the mind that had spent nearly 20 years in one form accept an entirely new one as its own.

Trini’s face in her mind brought forth a fresh wave of hatred, of mocking anger, that threatened to bowl her over.

_No,_ she said firmly, in her own mind. She was addressing Rita now, the fragment of her that wanted so badly to use her even now. _This is my place._ She’d gone to her room to do this for a reason - everything in it screamed of _her._ It was where she felt the safest and the strongest.

She took one deep breath, then another, each inhalation bolstering her mental self, each exhalation sending her deeper into her own mind. She tried not to shrink back at the thought that Rita was in there somewhere, in the deepest recesses, instead taking the fight to her, to exile her properly once and for all.

_Mine_ , she thought, over and over, using it as a mantra, timing it with her mental footsteps and the throbbing in her eye. _Mine, mine, mine. Get out, get out, get out._ It was an overwhelming rhythm, the only thing in her mind, any other thought chased out by the force of will Sam had turned herself into. Outwardly, she was perfectly still, seated in the dark in her bedroom floor. Inwardly, she was a wall of purging flame, burning out anything that didn’t belong.

That wall of flame met an abrupt, freezing wall, seawater and ice and ozone. _So considerate,_ came the slithering voice in her mind that was not hers. _Clearing the path for me._

Sam’s flame faltered. The seawater rushed forward, dousing the self-righteous fury in a wave of fear, and Sam felt herself tumbling end over end until she was back behind her own eyes.

_Stand up_. She did. Why had she been on the floor, anyway? Stupid. _Go back to the Rangers_. Yeah, she’d been in there before, hadn’t she? Something about her armor. It didn’t matter now. Wait, why had she left? Her head had been hurting. It still kind of did, a low, dull throb in time with her heartbeat. _It’s fine now_. It was fine now.

But she was so tired. The headache, she assumed, sapping her energy and making her sway on her feet. She wasn’t going anywhere like this. A long moment of contemplation, and something in her acquiesced. Like getting permission from the inside of her head. She sank into her bed, pulling the covers up to her chin and falling almost immediately into a deep, dreamless sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

“You’re sure you’re okay now? You were really weird when you ran out of here yesterday.” Zack peered into Sam’s face, as though he could see through her eyes into her brain.

She swatted at him. “I’m _fine_. It was just a - a flash migraine? Is that what they call them? I took an aspirin, I’m fine.”

Zack frowned, but relented as Alpha walked in.

“Sam! I need to talk to you.”

“What’s up?”

“I was reviewing the diagnostics log on your suit - “

"The what?” Zack asked, getting a long stare from Alpha before the robot continued.

“Your suits run a constant diagnostic log. They monitor your vitals, mostly, but also the status of the suit itself, in case they’re affected by outside contaminants or extreme conditions.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“You didn’t ask,” Alpha said, almost smugly, turning back to Sam. “As I said, I was going through the diagnostics log on your suit and I think I found what might be the issue.”

“Yeah?” Sam leaned in towards the little bot.

“Right here.” Alpha held up a tablet covered in scrolling lines of alien text and data that Sam had no idea where to start to understand, but focused her eyes on where Alpha’s finger tapped on the screen: an almost infinitesimal dip in an ongoing line graph. “For a quarter of a second, your visor became a tenth of a percent less solid.”

Sam lifted an eyebrow. “A _tenth_ of a percent?”

“I’m rounding,” Alpha admitted. “For the sake of time. But yes, the rigidity of your visor dropped, probably just long enough for the strike to cause enough damage to crack its membrane.”

“That can happen?” Sam asked. “I thought it was, like. Futuristic plasteel or whatever.”

“Plas _wha -_ no, never mind. I suppose we never had a chance to properly explain this to you.” He made a gesture like tossing the tablet towards the center of the room, where the morphing grid appeared when called on. A diagram of Sam’s helmet appeared, a 3D projection over their heads.

“Woah,” Zack murmured, and Sam quietly agreed.

“Your armor responds to your will,” Alpha said, with the air of a professor starting a lecture. “That’s why you all had such trouble morphing the first time - yes, including you, Sam. You weren’t sure you _wanted_ to be Rangers, yet. But it takes an effort of willpower to call and dismiss the armor...and to retract the visor.” The diagram zoomed in, on the front portion of the helmet. “Retracting the visor is technically dismissing a part of the armor. It’s rigid when not being addressed, and becomes malleable when it needs to be.”

“So because I wasn’t focusing on the visor, it became less rigid?” Sam tilted her head in confusion. “That doesn’t make sense. Wouldn’t I want the visor to be _more_ rigid if a putty deer hoof was flying at my face?”

Alpha waved the tablet at her. “I’m just telling you what the data told me, lady. Your visor became just soft enough to crack when struck, at the moment it was struck.”

Sam rubbed at her eye, frowning in confusion. Zack noticed and moved around in front of her. “Your eye still itching?”

“Hm?” She looked up at him, pulling her hand away from her eye. “Oh. Yeah, I guess a little.”

“Lemme look.”

“It’s fine, it’s just - “

“Shut up, let me look.” He tilted her face up to the light, peering into her eye. “It’s not red or anything. Probably just irritated, still.”

“That’s what I was trying to say, _mom_.” She squirmed away from him.

“Didn’t know you had hazel eyes, though.”

She paused, frowning again. “I don’t.”

“You’ve got that amber-brown thing going,” he said, gesturing at his own eyes. “Whatever, it’s pretty.”

“Jealous,” she accused flatly, and he stuck his tongue out at her as Jason walked in.

“What’s up?” Sam glanced over at him, and felt a surge of irritation. She didn’t understand it, and couldn’t explain it, but Jason’s sudden presence in the room made her mouth curl downwards.

“Welp, bossman’s here, everyone stop having fun,” she said, heading for the door he’d just entered through. Jason spread his hands in a “what did I do” gesture, and Zack just shook his head, bewildered.

“Maybe her head’s still bothering her,” he suggested, but he didn’t sound certain.

* * *

 

Sam considered hiding out in the loft again, but the others knew about it now and she didn’t want to be found right at that moment. So she headed home instead, grabbing fast food takeout on the way and eating half the fries before she made it in the door. Her dad was still out so she set up in her room, feet kicked up on the desk and keyboard in her lap. Some things, after all, never changed.

The thought made her pause, and frown, and she shook her head a little. Zack was wrong. Her eyes were fine. People’s eyes didn’t just change color.

_People don’t just spontaneously switch sexes because of magic rocks they find in the woods, either_. She sat at her computer for another couple of minutes, not really seeing the screen, before sighing explosively and swinging her feet onto the floor. It couldn’t hurt to check, right?

The bathroom light was the kind of horror-movie florescent that had always made her halfway expect to see a hand reaching out of the shower stall behind her, but it wouldn’t let her lie to herself about what she saw, either. Scooting one leg up onto the counter and leaning into the mirror, eye open as wide as it would go, she could see what Zack had seen: within the iris were flecks of gold-brown, forming a broken ring around the pupil. They hadn’t been there before, not even after her transformation. It unsettled her, and she leaned back, frowning at her reflection.

_Maybe I’m taking on more of Rita’s power?_ Sam knew from the others that Rita had scoured the city for gold, from anywhere and anything, and it seemed to form a large part of her magic. The thought made her uncomfortable, as did the thought of her body changing even more than it already had. The initial transformation had been a learning curve, to be sure, but she’d been surprised at the amount of relief she felt when her first morph hadn’t changed her back. She _liked_ this form. It was comfortable to her now. Well, mostly. Some things she was still learning to deal with.

But she’d thought that was over with. That Rita’s curse had done its thing and now she just had to learn to live this way. If things could just _keep changing_ , where would they stop? Would she eventually just turn into Rita?

_Would that be so awful_? The thought whispered at the back of her mind, even as a chill ran down her spine. An image came to her, unbidden, of Rita standing triumphant over a battlefield. Strong, haughty. Powerful, in a way Sam couldn’t begin to comprehend. _Would being this be so bad?_

Sam shook her head, feeling a thread of pain bloom behind her left eye again. “I’m Sam,” she said aloud. “I _like_ being Sam. I like being the Green Ranger. I don’t want to be someone else. This isn’t the body was I born with, but it’s mine now. I don’t want it to change any more.”

Something about the word _mine_ echoed within her, a strange sort of sense memory that she couldn’t place. She closed her eyes, turning away from the mirror, watching the afterimages dance behind her eyelids.

“I’m just. Gonna go eat my burger,” she said aloud to no one, sliding off the counter and heading back to her room, with every intention of distracting herself from everything for the foreseeable future.

* * *

“I’m _fine,_ Alpha.”

“You might be perfectly fine, but your armor is not.”

Sam pulled the still-cracked visor back, glaring at the robot. “It’s a will thing, right? I’ll just will it not to do stupid shit anymore.”

“Given what you six regularly get up to, forgive me if I don’t quite believe you.”

Sam made strangling motions at the back of Alpha’s head as Kimberly spoke up from nearby. “Can he actually, y’know, _stop_ you?”

Sam’s face lit up at the notion, but Alpha raised a single finger at them without turning around.

“Actually, yes. You are far from the first foolhardy, hard-headed Rangers to grace this ship with your presence.” The wall behind him rippled, ever so slightly.  “There are protocols in place - which I have activated, _Sam_ \- to prevent Rangers from leaving should it be deemed detrimental to their or the team’s well-being, and they choose to ignore the counsel of myself, their peers, or both.”

“Dear diary, today I learned that robots can be insufferably smug,” Sam muttered. “I entertained several daydreams of punching robots in the head. It made me feel better.”

“Oh, because that will _definitely_ make me let you out,” Alpha returned. Sam dropped her armor, rolling her eyes.

“Fine,” she groaned, dragging the word out as long as she could. “I’m gonna go _sleep_ , since no one ever lets me do _anything_. You’re _ruining_ my _life!_ ” And she stomped off down the hall, her parody of a teenage temper tantrum somewhat diminished by all the giggling.

“For real, though, Alpha.” Jason’s voice was solemn. “Is there a way to fix this? I know we did okay with the five of us, but I don’t want to lose a team member over a cracked windshield.”

“If I knew, I would have fixed it by now,” Alpha responded, just as seriously. “I’m as out of my depth as any of you.”

* * *

“Hey, Sam.” Looking up at the sound of her name, Sam saw Trini’s face over the edge of the loft space, grinning at her. “It’s great, right?”

“It is,” Sam agreed, sitting up. “Thanks for sharing it with me.”

Trini waved her off. “I understand needing a place to sulk.”

“I’m not _sulking_. I’m. Meditating.”

“Uh-huh. Hey, if you’re not going out to punch putties you wanna come train for a while?”

“Punch fake putties instead?” Sam shimmied over to the edge and dropped down beside Trini.

“No sense in losing your edge just because Alpha’s having a hissy fit over your armor.”

“Good point.”

 

* * *

Alpha had worked voice commands into the training simulators, after efforts to teach the Rangers the alphabet used on the interfaces had failed repeatedly. Sam loved it, personally - made it feel more like the Danger Room than a cave she was punching people in.

They started off with the hard-light putties, each taking a corner of the room and going through what were essentially katas at this point. Series after series of muscle-memory, taking down each putty in a prescribed way.

When they’d warmed up on the putties, they began sparring with each other, which was a much different experience. Where the putties were fixed in their methods and attacks, Trini was a wild card, switching between smooth tai-chi movements and lightning-fast strikes that Sam almost couldn’t keep up with. She found herself on her butt on the ground at least twice, with Trini giving a mock-arrogant cheer before helping her to her feet again.

Sam returned the favor a couple of times, though. Through these sparring sessions - and, to be fair, a _lot_ of landing on her butt on the ground - she’d discovered a loose sort of style that worked for her. Nothing so concrete as “kung fu” or “aikido”, but a method of taking down an opponent that was comfortable for her and her new form. Not that she’d ever really fought much before, but it seemed like all the muscles pulled differently now, shifting together in ways she wasn’t used to. She’d had to learn how to utilize new movements in new ways.

So she went low, aiming for Trini’s ankles, and destabilized the other girl’s footing, sending her arms windmilling as she tried not to fall. Sam grabbed one of those arms and twisted her body around, trapping the limb between her own arm and her torso, driving the heel of her other palm towards Trini’s nose in a mock strike. Trini retaliated by throwing all of her weight backwards, pulling them both to the ground and rolling them over. She threw Sam away from her and scrambled to her feet, a grin on her face.

Trini really liked sparring sometimes.

For her part, Sam hadn’t been prepared for the throw, or at least not for how enthusiastically she’d been thrown, and had clocked the back of her head quite badly on a piece of stone that jutted out from the wall. She sat up, holding a hand to the place on the back of her head where all her nerve endings seemed to have been suddenly redirected. She heard Trini swear as she realized what happened, and pulled her hand away to see blood on her fingers.

Rage flooded through her. Indignation, offense, and blinding adrenaline coursed through her as she turned her head to watch Trini approach. A litany in her mind, first in her own voice and then doubled, an accelerando duet of _how dare she. How_ dare _she._

“I am so sorry,” Trini was saying. Sam didn’t answer. Her head hurt, her eye hurt, and she couldn’t think past the ongoing chorus in her head. _How dare she how dare she how dare she_. “Are you alright? Shit.”

In one fluid motion Sam stood and _shoved_ Trini, pushing with every ounce of her frankly ridiculous strength. Trini shouted in pain and surprise, flying across the cavern and smashing against a far wall.

“What the fuck,” came the feeble protest as Trini hauled herself back upright, surrounded by swirling dust. “I _said_ I was -”

Sam flew at her, making the end of her sentence a gasp as she drove her back against the wall. Just held her there, pressed against the stone, as she coughed and choked in an attempt to reclaim the air that had been knocked out of her lungs. It was just like she’d imagined, she realized with an unfamiliar sort of glee. It was just like she remembered.

Especially the look. That look, on Trini’s face, that expression of fear. Terror, as the enemy has you on the ropes. It only lasted for a moment before Trini’s jaw set in determination, but it was enough to give Sam a sense of fulfillment.

Then Trini drew her knees up and shoved her feet into Sam’s midsection, breaking her grip and sending her flying in the opposite direction. She landed hard, cracking her head again, and stars danced behind her eyes.

A single coherent thought surfaced: _What the fuck am I doing_? She looked up, vision swimming, and saw Trini leaned over, taking several deep, gasping breaths, eyes closed against the pain. Pain Sam had caused. Pain she had enjoyed inflicting.

“What the fuck,” she whispered, struggling upright. She couldn’t hold onto a thought; she wasn’t even entirely sure of where she _was._ Just that Trini was hurt, and she had hurt Trini, and she had _enjoyed_ hurting Trini. “What the…” She closed her eyes, shook her head. Her thoughts didn’t get any clearer. “I gotta. I gotta go.” And for the second time in as many days, she ran, scrambling up the stairs, stumbling and shoving past Zack and Jason before they could stop her.

“What’s going on?” Jason called after her.

Sam didn’t answer. Just kept running. Zack had gone ahead into the training area, skidding down the cave wall and catching Trini under the arm, quietly coaching her through getting her breath back.

“What happened?” he asked, glancing up at where Jason stood at the entrance to the cave.

“I flipped her, y’know. Sparring. She hit her head, lost her shit at me and tried to choke me out,” Trini replied, with long pauses in between to take gulping breaths. “Zack, her eyes were _gold_.”


	4. Chapter 4

Sam had just enough presence of mind to grab her bag as she darted out of the ship. Alpha must have turned off the force field or whatever it was, because she shot out of the caves and into the water like her heels were on fire, exploding up through the gorge and darting through the trees.

The path was familiar now, and her mind diverted from navigating the forest to untangling her thoughts, panicked and circling. That wasn’t her. That _couldn’t_ have been her, she wouldn’t have hurt Trini like that, not intentionally.

_It was justified_ , a quiet, muffled voice in the back of her mind said. _She hurt you_.

_No, that was an accident_ , Sam insisted, realizing distantly that she was arguing with her own mind.

_She deserved it_. A series of images, memories, flashed through her mind, with the added miasma of uncertainty. Trini’s smile as she stood; exultant or predatory? When she came over to where Sam lay bleeding; checking on her well-being or admiring her handiwork?

She reached the edge of the forest and her steps slowed. Her eye was throbbing, _again_ , and she rubbed at it with agitation. Maybe Trini _had_ deliberately hurt her, she thought as she made her way through town, eyes on her feet. Maybe Trini never really trusted her, and all her friendliness had been leading up to that moment. Getting Sam’s guard down. Trying to take her out, because she was a threat to the team.

Maybe. She just couldn’t _think_ clearly. Food would help, she decided, because it usually did, and she could call Trini and apologize - maybe - and sort all of this out.

“Maybe it’s hormones,” she muttered darkly to herself as she unlocked the front door of her house. “I’ve just gone _hysterical_ , that’s all it is.”

* * *

There was a note from her dad taped to the microwave - long established as the best way to ensure Sam would see it - saying he’d been offered a last-minute spot on a weekend run and had taken it. She wasn’t surprised, these quick jobs popped up often and provided a buffer for when the boats weren’t going out regularly. She was actually kind of relieved. She was having enough trouble right now, without the additional layer of having to check if her watch was on or not.

So she made food and settled in the living room with it, finding a movie to run in the background while she ate and thought. Some romcom she’d seen a thousand times and could tune out. Something familiar when everything around her was changing. Again.

She was less than halfway through her meal when her phone went off. Jason’s name was on the screen, and her heart stopped briefly.

_He’s just checking on you_ , she assured herself, swallowing her mouthful of food. _You ran off and Trini was hurt and he’s checking on you._

She picked the phone up and slid her thumb across the screen, putting it up to her ear.

“Hello?”

“What the _fuck_.” Jason’s voice was simultaneously loud and muffled, like he was shouting from across the room. He must have had her on speaker.

“What - “

“What’d you do to Trini?” That was Zack.

“I didn’t - it was - “

“You tried to _kill me_!” Trini herself, now. Were they all just clustered around the phone? Getting all of their anger out at once?

“I don’t understand why you’d do that.” Billy.

“I thought we could trust you.” Kimberly.

The tears were welling up now and she tried to fight them, tried to speak past the lump in her throat, but nothing came. The admonishments on the other end of the line just kept going, rolling over and over each other, a cacophony of voices, all damning her. Eventually Jason shushed them. “Well? Do you want to make an excuse? Some bullshit reason that why what you did was okay?”

Sam opened her mouth, but all that came out was a choked sob. Tears were streaming down her face now, and she felt like she couldn’t breathe. Her thoughts raced with all the things she wanted to say, _I’m sorry_ and _please stop_ and _it was an accident_ , but none of them survived the journey to her mouth.

Very quietly, in the very back of her mind, was a voice screaming _there’s something wrong, there’s something wrong_ with me _, I need your help_ , but it was silenced so quickly she never quite heard it.

Jason’s voice came back over the line, sharp and derisive. “You don’t even have anything to say for yourself?” A scoff. “Figures. Even you know how fucked up you are. Look, just don’t bother coming back, okay? We don’t need you here.”

The line went dead. Sam pulled the phone away from her ear. The movie was still going. She couldn’t hear it. She could barely see it, for that matter, her vision obscured by the flood of tears.

One mistake. That’s all it took. One mistake and she was out on her ass.

_That’s how they work,_ she realized, with a rising sense of indignation. _That’s how they’ve_ always _worked. That’s what happened to Rita - she was powerful and they were_ scared _and they threw her out because they didn’t want to deal with her._

She stood, setting her food aside. She wasn’t hungry anymore. She wanted to punch something, and scream, and cry until she couldn’t anymore.

So she headed for the mountain.

* * *

"Gold?” Kimberly asked, looking between Trini and Jason. They were gathered in the console room, all of them and Alpha, like a grim-faced business meeting. “Like - like a wolf, or…?”

“Just...bright gold,” Trini said, lifting a hand in irritation. “Like….like when someone has light brown eyes, but more...gold. Look, shit, I didn’t have a color wheel on hand at the time, okay?” She crossed her arms over her chest, huffing out a breath as Jason laid a comforting hand on her shoulder.

“Something’s wrong,” he said tightly. “Something happened to her. She might not even realize it, either.”

“What, like she’s brainwashed?” Zack asked, frowning. “I know I said something about her eyes changing color, but some people’s do that, you know? As they get older?”

“ _Babies’_ eyes do that,” Trini shot back. “And it stops when they’re, like, three.”

“Some people’s do,” Zack said defensively as Jason waved a hand in between them.

“Not really the point right now, guys.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair, looking around at Alpha. “Didn’t you say there was some kind of...failsafe? Something to keep her from leaving?”

“I. Ah. I was lying?” Five sets of eyes landed on Alpha. “I assumed if she thought there was no way to leave she wouldn’t try to leave! I didn’t know she’d bolt like that.”

“He’s not wrong,” Billy said, shrugging. “It was a valid tactic. We should actually set something up like that, though, that’d be pretty useful.”

“I guess,” Jason sighed. “Look, she probably went home. Let’s head there, see if we can talk to her.”

“We shouldn’t all go,” Kimberly pointed out. “It might look like we’re ganging up on her, and if there is something wrong…” She trailed off, and the others made various noises of assent.

“I’ll go,” Zack said. “I assume you’re going, bossman.”

“Don’t call me that,” Jason said automatically, as he was already reaching for his jacket. He and Zack headed for the door, but he paused, glancing over his shoulder. “Hey, Alpha?”

“Hmm?”

“See if you and Billy can’t rig up something that can hold her,” he said quietly. “You know. Just in case.”

“...alright,” Alpha said with uncertainty, fingers twitching as he turned to the console.

* * *

She didn’t go to the clearing, though that was her first instinct. She’d always gone to the clearing before, which was how she’d found the stone that had started all this. The clearing had memories, and she didn’t feel like remembering anything right now.

She went further out this time, near the edge of the quarry, where the grass spread out over the rock in splotchy patches like paint dropped at the edge of the canvas. She more or less landed on her knees, just staring out at the bare rock. She didn’t know why she was here. She just hadn’t wanted to be in her house anymore. Screaming had been an idea at one point, but now that she was here she just didn’t have the energy. She felt blank, empty, purposeless.

Somewhere beneath that, though, was anger. Lots of it. They were scared of her, that much was obvious, what other reason could there be for the amount of bluster and aggression they’d had over the phone? And why over the phone? Why not confront her directly, if they were so angry? Fear, was all it was. Cowardice. Disrespect.

The void that seemed to have taken over her mind filled, slowly at first and then in a blinding rush, with bubbling, roiling anger, and with a wordless shout she drove her fist into the rock in front of her, leaving a small crater where her knuckles impacted.

Then she watched, with a sort of detached fascination, as the crater smoothed out and filled in, and then _grew_ , rising up out of the surrounding rock, pulling from it and shaping itself, into a roughly humanoid shape.

The putty soldier knelt in front of Sam on one knee, one fist on the ground, in clear deference. Sam was both astounded and, somehow, not at all surprised. Like this was what obviously happened when you punched the ground in a fit of rage. You made a mindless clay automaton. What else?

At the very back of her mind, muted and held at a distance almost deliberately, was absolute gibbering terror. It was the same voice that had tried to cry out for help earlier, and was about as effective now.

Sam stood slowly, looking down at the putty, seeing the glint of gold flecks in its ashen skin.

“Stand up,” she said, her voice quiet. The putty obeyed, standing before her. It was a little taller than her, and more broadly built across the shoulders. It just stood there, like a robot with no input.

After a moment, stepping carefully around it, she lifted her foot and let it drop onto the stone, a half-hearted axe kick, making another dent.

Another putty formed out of the point of impact, standing patiently behind its predecessor. Sam stared at them both for a long moment, then stepped away a few paces, hand over her mouth.

_I have Rita’s magic,_ she thought, with a little thrill of excitement or terror or both. She said it out loud, just to be sure: “I have Rita’s magic.” A laugh bubbled up out of her throat. “ _I have Rita’s magic._ ”

Possibilities rushed through her mind. There was so much she could _do_ with this! She could stop the putty mutants. She could _control_ the putty mutants.

_I can give the Rangers something to really be afraid of._ It wasn’t a loud suggestion. She barely even heard it, at first. But it was a constant, creeping presence, and as it sank into her subconscious she remembered sitting in her living room, unable to breathe for sobbing, as Jason’s voice cut through everything she’d thought she was. Everything she thought she’d become.

Her jaw clenched. So did her fists. With one deep, slow breath, she turned back to her putties. They were still standing obediently, waiting for her orders. She lifted one hand to her chin, considering, like a fashion designer with a new model.

“Let’s see what I can do with this.”


	5. Chapter 5

Zack and Jason stood outside Sam’s house, shoulders hunched against the rain that was starting to fall. They’d knocked, twice now, and gotten no response.

“Sam?!” Zack yelled, prompting Jason to smack him in the arm. “What? Dude, her dad’s not home, chill.”

“I don’t think she is, either,” Jason muttered, digging his phone out of his pocket. He dialed her number, and after a moment they heard a high, tinny-sounding ringtone from behind the closest window. Sam’s phone.

“Well, shit.” Sighing, he slid the phone back into his pocket. “What now?”

Zack snapped his fingers a few times. “Alpha said the armor tracks our vitals, right? Maybe it’s got, like, a GPS in it.”

“You think she’s running around in her armor?” Jason asked, then sighed again. “Whatever, it’s better than nothing. I’m worried now,” he admitted. “I thought she was just upset, but if she’s gone off without her phone....”

“I know, dude.” Zack thumped him on the shoulder. “Come on, let’s get back.”

They were less than a dozen steps down the sidewalk when Jason’s phone went off. He snatched it out of his pocket, face falling a bit when he saw not Sam’s name on the display, but Billy’s.

“What’s up?” he asked, walking up the road to where Zack had stopped to wait for him.

“Putties,” Billy said. He sounded out of breath. “In town. We’re already headed there.”

“Like soldiers or the animals?” He’d broken into a run, Zack following suit. They’d worried before that the putty animals would act rabid, start venturing out of the forest and towards the town.

“ _Both_ ,” Billy said with not a little exasperation. “Look, we’re already here, I gotta - they need - “

“Yeah, go go go,” Jason said. “Wait, where in town?”

“Where people are _screaming_ ,” Billy told him, and the line went dead.

“Well he’s not wrong,” Jason muttered, sticking the phone back in his pocket. He filled Zack in as they ran, and watched the grim expression settle over his face.

“Let’s find a phone booth,” he said, and Jason spared a brief bark of a laugh before heading for a secluded area where they could morph without being seen.

* * *

Sam sat on top of a light pole, resting her chin in the palm of her hand, letting her fingers curl up towards her cheekbone. Gleaming golden eyes surveyed the scene below her: putty soldiers harassing anyone who got too close, a few corrupted mountain cats edging around the treeline, occasionally letting out a scream, just for ambiance.

Oh, the _screaming_. Running, flailing, hiding, like ants splashed with kerosene. No one was being attacked, the soldiers were just kind of doing interpretive dance in the middle of the street.

Sam was very deliberate about that. No civilian casualties. It wasn’t _them_ she wanted to hurt, after all.

No one had even seen her, perched up here. “Nobody ever looks up,” she said, looking away from her project for a moment. “Oh, hello, there we are.” From the edge of the trees, just a little ways down from the big cats, emerged three technicolor forms. “Pink, blue, yellow,” Sam muttered, eyes narrowing. “Where are red and black? They’re missing the party.” _They think three of them are enough to deal with you_ , a voice whispered. Sam dismissed it. “They don’t even know it’s me,” she said aloud. It was a bad habit she was developing, answering the voice in her head. But everything about her life was a little mad right now, she was noticing. The other voice, the one that had tried to stop her to begin with, had fallen silent, curled up in the back of her mind, futile and lifeless.

“Well, it’s not my fault if they miss out. Let’s _dance_.” Sam’s murmur turned into a kind of delighted snarl at the end, and with a flick of her fingers the putties turned, as one, to face the approaching Rangers.

* * *

The three of them stopped in their tracks, skidding on the wet grass as the putties turned to face them.

“I think they know we’re here,” Billy said tightly, over the communicators in their helmets.

“Y’think?” Trini muttered, but there was no heat to it. She was too preoccupied with the mountain cats prowling at the edge of her vision. “What’re we thinking - two on the soldiers, one on the cats?”

“Better plan.” That was Jason, over the communicator, as he and Zack emerged from the forest. “Zack, you and Kimberly take the cats. Trini, Billy, you’re with me.”

“Yes sir, captain sir.” Jason ignored Zack’s muttering as they split into their teams.

Sam’s eyes lit up as Jason and Zack entered the field, and she stood up on her light pole perch, hands raised high. “Gang’s all here!” She crowed it into the thunderous sky, almost rapturous, and as a single unit the putty soldiers surged forward.

* * *

“They definitely know we’re here.”

“Thank you, Billy.” Jason’s voice was terse as the soldiers reached them, and he ducked a swing, driving into the creature’s midsection with his shoulder. “How many of these things are there?”

“There’s like six of these damn cat things.” Zack’s report was punctuated by a soft grunt of impact and a lot of muttered swearing.

“Four,” Kimberly corrected.

“Too many,” Zack shot back.

“Twelve putty soldiers,” Billy called. A gray humanoid form went flying overhead with an inhuman screech that ended abruptly as it impacted the pavement.

“Eleven.” There was only a trace of smugness in Trini’s voice, but it was definitely there.

Jason dodged a haymaker swing from his own opponent. “Any theories on why they’re here?”

“Yeah, I wrote an essay. Lemme doublespace it and I’ll have it on your desk ASAP.” A mountain cat’s scream was cut short. “It’s got footnotes and shit.”

“Not helpful, Zack.”

Billy caught a punch badly, tilting off-balance and landing on his back. Jason whipped around to check on him, but Billy just pointed skyward.

“Jason, I think I might have a theory.” Jason followed the line of his finger, up to the figure standing on top of a nearby power pole, arms outstretched.

“I think it might be Sam.”

* * *

“Aw, he ruined my surprise.” Sam spared a moment to pout before swinging a foot outwards and dropping from the light pole, leaving a smashed indent in the asphalt where she landed. A putty rose up in her wake, almost as an afterthought as she walked towards the Rangers.

Jason had pulled his visor back as she approached. “Is this you?” He waved an arm to indicate the ongoing battle. “Did you do this?”

“I picked up a couple of new skills.” She shrugged. “Figured I’d show them off.”

“What happened?” Jason dodged a strike, took out his attacker with a mule kick to the chest. “Why are you doing this?”

Sam’s face contorted in a snarl. “You _know_ what happened! You don’t get to _question_ me anymore!” The putty that had been trailing behind her flung itself at Jason, making him have to roll quickly to one side to avoid it.

“If it’s about what happened while we were sparring, I forgive you.” Trini’s mask was up now too. “Accidents happen, it’s fine.”

Sam said nothing, merely flung out an arm, and the putties redoubled their efforts, focused on the yellow Ranger.

“Come back to the ship,” Jason urged, as Billy rushed past them towards Trini. “Let us help you.”

“You don’t want to help me,” Sam spat.

“Of course we do. You’re a Ranger. No, fuck that - you’re our _friend_.”

Sam’s face went slack for a moment at his words, before she shook her head wildly.

“No! That’s not - you’re lying!” Panic was starting to bubble up inside her mind. She cast out her power around her without realizing, searching for help, for protection.

“Why would I lie?” Jason’s voice was soft, and she hated him for it, hated the part of herself that believed him.

“Because you don’t _need me anymore_.” She spat the words in his face. “Isn’t that what you said, _boss_?”

“I never said that.” His expression was twisted in confusion now, and the voice in the back of her mind, the one she’d thought she’d suppressed completely, lifted its head. “I would never say that.”

_He’s lying_ , said the slithering voice.

_No, he’s not._ Faint, weak, from the recesses of her mind. _Something’s wrong_.

Sam shook her head again, laying her hands at her temples. “You said,” she insisted. “All of you - you _said_ -”

“Sam.” Even quieter than before, and she realized distantly that he was trying to keep anyone who might still be around from hearing her name. “Please. Come back to the ship. Let us help you.”

“I don’t need help.” _Yes, I do_. “I’m _fine_. I’m better than I’ve ever _been_ , no thanks to you.” _Help me, please._ Her hands were still pressed to her temples, her eyes squeezed shut. “You don’t need me, you don’t want me around, I fucked up and you kicked me out, you called me and told me how bad I fucked up and you kicked me out.” The words came pouring out of her in an unbroken, rambling stream, as pressure mounted inside her head like a migraine, centered behind her left eye. “I don’t _need you_ , I’m powerful all on my own, I have power you couldn’t even imagine - “

“It’s not you.” Trini’s voice, winded as she stepped away from a cloud of putty-dust. 

“It’s Rita.” That was Billy, standing beside Jason now. “Isn’t it?”

Zack and Kimberly approached now, as the corrupted mountain cats behind them had gone still, their animation frozen in the wake of Sam’s mental battle. They formed a loose half-circle, not trapping her, but still covering several angles. No one directed them to do this, they just _did_ , unspoken teamwork and she _hated them_.

“Come on,” Zack murmured. “Let’s go back.”

“We can help you.” Kimberly sounded near tears. “Please, let us help you.”

“No!” Sam screamed, clutching at her head. That suppressed voice had risen to a presence, pushing back against the tide of anger and hatred that flooded her, and the pressure it created in her mind was almost unbearable. “I don’t need - I don’t want - “

The pressure surged to a breaking point, and Sam felt a pulse wave of power radiate out around them.

The line she had cast out earlier, looking for a defender, tugged sharply in response, and with an unearthly roar three huge corrupted bears charged out of the forest towards the Rangers.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Zack said, with feeling.

Sam watched, not really processing, as the five of them reacted immediately, trying to take the bears down quickly. She remembered, faintly, that it had taken three of them half an hour just to take down one of the creatures, and they still hadn’t come away completely unharmed. Three at once was….dire, to say the least.

The battle had already started roughly, with Jason getting knocked upside the head three times already because he kept looking back at Sam.

_He’s worried about you,_ that voice said, the one that had been suppressed before but was now louder than anything Sam had ever heard or thought in her life, thunderous inside her skull. _They’re fighting three of the most difficult corrupted animals you’ve come across, and he’s putting himself at risk worrying about_ you _._

“I don’t understand,” Sam mumbled, with numb lips. “He said...they all said…”

That slithering, creeping voice, the one that had guided her the past few days, struggled to make itself heard. All Sam caught were snatches of phrases, _tricked_ and _hate_ and _destroy_.

Her head throbbed anew, making her fall to her knees and clutch at her temples, as that word - _destroy_ \- brought back a memory like a crashing wave. The cold and the dark, and Rita’s laugh, Rita’s voice: _my destroyer_.

“Fuck,” she whispered. Even that made her head hurt more, and she dug her fingernails into her scalp in search of distraction or reprieve. “I’m possessed,” she muttered, each word an assault on her nerves. “I’m possessed and being an asshole.”

Saying it out loud, accepting the horrible, dawning realization that the past few days hadn’t been her own, that she’d been puppeteered around by Rita from beyond the grave - _again_ \- brought both a wave of relief and a fresh tearing at the inside of her skull, and she _screamed_ with the pain.

“Sam!” Zack had whipped around at the sound, and she watched as massive jaws clamped onto his arm from behind, making him let out a scream of his own.

“No,” Sam whispered, reaching a hand out towards him from her nearly-prone state. “No more. You won’t hurt them anymore.”

And with an effort of will that felt somewhat like pulling her brain out through her nose, Sam dispersed the bears. Disintegrated them, scattering clay and gold on the wind around the Rangers.

Zack took half a moment to clutch at his arm before sprinting towards Sam, sliding on his knees in the dirt as he reached her, the others following behind.

“Hey, girl,” he murmured. “You back with us?”

She looked up, exhaustion and pain blurring her vision until the Rangers were a kaleidoscope of primary colors, all flecked with gold.

“I need help,” she whispered. “Please help me.”

And pain took her, sweeping her away into blank, blissful, unfeeling darkness.

* * *

With Sam’s unconscious form laid in an enclosed room - reinforced, Alpha assured them, and after all the ship had been built to withstand the average strength of the Rangers in the first place - the others convened in the central chamber, Zordon included.

“So she’s almost definitely possessed by Rita,” Jason said, arms folded across his chest.

“She controlled the putties,” Billy pointed out. “Rita could do that.”

“She made them, too,” Jason added. “When she jumped down, she made one from where she hit the ground.”

“And _bears_ ,” Zack said from the corner. “She sicced _bears_ on us. She knows I hate bears.”

“I don’t think it was on purpose, Zack.” Kimberly tossed a look at Jason as she said it. “I think.”

“How long has this been going on?” Trini asked. “What have we been missing? This didn’t happen overnight.”

“What is the earliest abnormality you can remember?” Zordon asked, loud voice calm but concerned.

“Her visor getting cracked, I guess?” Kimberly shrugged. “I mean, she wasn’t acting weird until that time with Trini. Which was, what, twelve hours ago?”

“Something like that.” Trini scrubbed at her face. “Which means it’s going on eighteen since the last time I slept.”

Somehow, her saying the number out loud made them all suddenly feel it, the ache in their bones and the dragging at their eyelids.

“She’s safe for now, right?” Jason asked Alpha, who made a quiet whirring noise in response.

“As safe as I can make her,” he said. “I think, if our theories are correct, the biggest danger is from inside her own mind, right now.”

Jason made a low groaning noise. “Alright,” he sighed. “We’ll take shifts. Just...being here, in case something pops off. I’ll be first.”

“Fuck that,” Kimberly said immediately. “I know for a fact you didn’t sleep last night, because you were here when I got here. Go home.” They had a brief glaring contest. “If it makes you feel better, you can be _second_.”

He relented at that, throwing his hands up and moving to collect his bag from the floor.

“Alright, but the second something happens - “

“I will call you immediately,” she assured him, and shooed all four of them out of the ship.

“Thank you, Kimberly.” She turned to face the wall as Zordon’s voice rumbled through the room. “You are very compassionate.”

“I mean.” She shrugged with one shoulder. “She’s my friend.”

“Indeed.” And that was all he had to say in response.

* * *

Sam woke slowly, groggily, the lights overhead swimming in her vision as her head pounded in time with her heartbeat.

_Where...oh. This is familiar._ The scene flashed through her head, from months ago, half-joking at Jason about knocking her out and locking her up. Sarcastic humor as a defense mechanism.

“He still locked you up in the end, though, didn’t he?” Sam’s head jerked to the left at the sound of the voice, and a series of painful flashes behind her eyes immediately informed her that that had been a bad idea. She rolled fully onto her side, clutching at her head for a moment before she could peek out from between her fingers at the source of the voice. Sitting calmly in the corner, looking for all the world like she was waiting in line for coffee, was a figure Sam had only seen on the news - and in her nightmares, as dramatic as that sounded.

“Rita,” Sam breathed. Terror locked her muscles in place and she lay there, rigid, peering out from behind her fingers.

The witch grinned widely, not-quite-human mouth stretching wide over golden teeth. “Hello, Sam. About time we talked face-to-face, hmm?”


	6. Chapter 6

Sam convinced her muscles to unlock, one by one, group by group, until she was able to sit up, head still pounding mightily.

“You’re not real.” She said it to the wall. Looking at the spectre in the corner was still too much, too nerve-wracking.

“What, because I’m dead?” High-pitched laughter. “That’s only ever been a deterrent to the weak, my champion.”

“Don’t call me that.” She snapped it out, a rebuke and a command in one, the impact lessened by her gaze still fixed on the wall. “I’m not your _anything_.”

“You took up the coin.”

“Not on purpose.”

“You _kept_ the coin.”

“I didn’t have a choice. The Rangers needed their sixth.”

“And that’s all you’ve been to them, isn’t it? A stop-gap, a bit of tin foil between faulty wires to make the machine run.”

“And how does the outer-space sea witch know about tin foil, huh?” Sam grimaced, laying a hand on her stomach. She was starving; she had no idea how long she’d been out.

“Oh, I’ve learned so  _much_ from you. I’ve been living in your mind, after all.”

* * *

 

“What’s going on?” Jason squinted at Kimberly, trying to clear the bleariness from his eyes. Five hours wasn’t enough, but it was better than nothing. Kind of.

“She’s...talking.”

“You talked to her?”

“I didn’t say that.” Kimberly gestured at the door to the room Sam was in. Jason listened for a moment, and Sam’s voice was indeed coming from behind it. Heated, like she was arguing with someone.

“...at least she’s awake?” Jason rubbed at his eyes. “Dammit.”

“I want to check on her but I don’t want to set off whatever happened earlier again.” Kimberly worried at her lower lip with her teeth, eyes fixed on the door. “I mean, as long as we don’t hear, you know, _violence_ coming from in there I guess she’s okay?”

“She’ll need to eat eventually,” Jason murmured. “I’m gonna call the others, if nothing else they can help us sit on her in case she’s. Y’know.”

“Not okay?”

“Yeah. Go see if Alpha’s got anything new.”

Kimberly headed down the hall and Jason pulled out his phone, resting his head against the metal of the door as he dialed.

* * *

“The phone call,” Sam said, horrible realization dawning. “From Jason and the others. That was _you_ , wasn’t it? You’ve been in my head, fucking with me this whole time.”

“I had to make you realize the truth, my champion.”

Sam buried her face in her hands. “I told you not to call me that.”

“Successor, then? Apprentice? _Imitation_?”

“Improvement?” Sam chanced a look in the corner now. “Rita’s” face was a little shocked and a little impressed at once. “I mean after all, _I_ almost killed the Rangers with three bears and a panic attack. You couldn’t manage that with an army of putties and a giant gold Godzilla knockoff.” The surprise was turning to irritation. Sam turned to face the corner now. She didn’t think she could stand up, but she could face this pale remainder of what had been haunting her all these months.

* * *

Kimberly and Jason were standing outside Sam’s room with Alpha when the others arrived, Zack and Trini both holding styrofoam takeout boxes.

“Oh, good idea,” Jason said, surprised. “I didn’t even think to tell you to get her food. I am.” He sighed. “Very tired.”

“But we have good news!” Kimberly interjected.

“I like good news,” Billy said through a yawn.

“Do you remember when I was trying to figure out what happened to Sam’s armor?” Alpha threw up the holographic projection of what was on the tablet in his hand, the graphs and lines none of them could read.

“Something about her will dropping, right?” Zack squinted at the projection.

“Right. But! It wasn’t actually _her_ will. I analyzed some of the gold that you carried back with you on your armor.” Another projection, molecular diagrams with dark distortions surrounding parts of them.

“That’s gold,” Billy said. “That’s a gold molecule.”

“And that looks like what was messing with the morphing grid,” Jason added, pointing at the dark clouds on the hologram. “When we first met Sam.”

“That’s what remains of Rita’s energy,” Alpha told them. “We still don’t quite understand how Rita did everything she did, but we know it involves manipulating energy. We’ve been calling it her _will_ because everything with that distortion seems to behave according to Rita’s stated goals. That’s why the reanimated putty soldiers and the corrupted animals are still centered around Angel Grove. Now!” He turned to them, optics whirling. “Do you remember what I said about the durability of the armor?”

“Diamonds,” Kimberly responded.

“Right! Most of the things that can scratch or break a diamond are very rare or non-terrestrial. But there is one very common thing that can scratch a diamond.” He brought up a cross-section of Sam’s armor, then magnified it to the molecular level. The structure was unrecognizable, but the distortion around it was very familiar. “Another diamond.”

Billy was making noises of realization, but Trini just scrubbed at her face with one hand.

“Alpha, I’m tired, I need you to use small words.”

“What he’s saying - excuse me, sorry - what’s he’s saying,” Billy started, edging his way to the front of the group. “Is that it wasn’t Sam’s will that dropped. The energy from this-” and he pointed at the gold molecule. “Interacted with the energy from _this_.” The armor now. “And convinced it to let it through. Like - like whitelisting a program in your firewall to let it run.”

“And _that’s_ what started all this,” Jason said. “At least, we’re pretty sure.”

“Her eye!” Zack clapped a hand to his forehead. “That must have been gold she got in her eye from that deer!”

“And it interacted with whatever was left over from Rita’s energy to affect Sam.” Alpha’s voice was solemn now. “Even if she didn’t realize it, she’s probably been pretty evenly matched against Rita’s influence before now. All it took was one little speck to tip the scales.”

“What we don’t know is how to fix it.” Kimberly glanced at the door. Sam’s voice was still coming through it, the one-sided argument continuing. “I don’t know how...how much of _her_ is there right now, and I don’t want to set off another episode like what happened with Trini.”

Trini lifted her styrofoam box. “We’ve got food. That usually fixes her mood, right?”

A look passed around the group. Jason shrugged. “I mean, we won’t solve anything if we don’t try, right?”

Trini handed the box to Kimberly. “Go for it, Kimmy.”

* * *

Rita’s lip curled into a vicious snarl. “I gave you power - “

“You did,” Sam conceded, cutting off the slithering voice that tried to reassert itself in her mind. “But _I_ utilized it. You were never anything but a shadow, a sad attempt at a second chance.” Rita curled one hand into a fist, slamming it against the wall behind her. Sam took that as a victory, a sign that she was getting to the spectre of Rita’s ego. “You know how I know you’re not real?” She jabbed a finger at the staff that leaned against the wall next to Rita, gold and curving, with a translucent green stone set at its tip. “Because you still think you have _that_.” She reached into her pocket, dug out the stone that never left her person. “You _were_ the Green Ranger, however many eons ago. You betrayed them. You _killed_ them. I won’t do the same. I won’t let you _make me_ do the same.”

She clutched the stone in her fist. It was warm, and that warmth radiated out through her palm and up her arm into her body, reigniting that spark in her center, what she’d felt the first time she’d morphed. Gritting her teeth and praying that she wouldn’t topple over, she slid off of the table she’d been sitting on and stood - no, _towered_ over what remained of Rita Repulsa. “This is mine now. _I_ am the Green Ranger. You are a shadow in my mind. You are _nothing_.”

A knock came at the door, almost timid, but enough to make Sam look over. “Sam?” Kimberly’s voice. “We heard you, uh, talking.” _To yourself_ , was the unspoken end of that sentence. “We brought you some food?”

“It’s alright,” Sam called, pocketing the stone and sitting back on the table. Her legs felt like jello. She glanced at the corner. It was empty.

“I’m alright.”

* * *

 

An hour and a full stomach later, Sam had recounted the entirety of the last few days. Most of it was said with her eyes on the floor, unable to look at her friends as she admitted she hadn’t trusted them.

“I’m sorry,” she told the floor. “I should have said something earlier. I should have trusted you guys to help me.”

“You were brainwashed,” Jason said. “You weren’t fully making all your own decisions.”

“Plus...we did treat you pretty bad when you first showed up.” A quick glance showed that Trini wasn’t looking directly at anyone, either. “I guess I can understand that kind of panic reaction.”

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” Sam said earnestly. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Dude. Brainwashed.” A quick flicker of a smile, to show all was forgiven. “I meant what I said in town. I forgive you.”

“You guys keep saying ‘brainwashed’ like that forgives everything.” Sam put her forehead on her knees. “I was still in there. The things I did were still fueled by my own...fears, I guess. Insecurities. Suspicions.”

“We should have realized something was wrong,” Kimberly said quietly. “We’re supposed to know when you need help.”

“I’m supposed to know when to ask for it,” Sam countered.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Trini groaned. “It’s no one’s _fault_ , okay? If we wanna blame somebody, let’s blame Rita. She fucked up everything else around here.”

“Agreed,” Jason said, a smile hitching at the side of his mouth. “Everything is Rita’s fault.”

“But we can fix it, because fuck Rita, she doesn’t get to take our friend.”

Forehead still pressed to her knees, Sam tried to suppress a sniffle, but failed, and after a long moment found herself wrapped in several hugs at once.

“We gotta stop doing this,” she muttered from the center of the nebula of arms. “People are gonna talk. Seriously, get off me, I can’t breathe.”

* * *

 She sat in the command room, on a small raised platform so she was eye-to-optic with Alpha, who ran a small scanner over her eyes several times.

“You were right, Zack,” he announced. “There’s still a piece of corrupted gold in her left eye.”

“That explains a lot,” Sam muttered, fingers twitching as she repressed the urge to rub at it. Talking about it was making it itch again.

“I have a theory,” Alpha continued, speaking to Sam now. “Do you remember when you dispersed those putty bears?”

Sam winced. “Yeah. Sorry about that, by the way.”

“You better be,” Zack muttered, but it was without any real malice, and Trini smacked him for it anyway.

"I think you might be able to disperse the gold from within your eye.”

Sam stared at Alpha for a moment.. “That sounds painful.”

“Not as painful as trying to extract it manually,” Alpha countered, and Sam found she had to concede the point.

“Problem: I remember _doing_ it, but not _how_ I did it. I was fighting Rita at the time, trying to keep her from making you guys dead.” She spread her hands in a gesture of surrender. “I just kind of...did it. And anyway I don’t know how much of her power I even have left, after my, ah, argument with her earlier.”

“She’s always going to be a part of you.” Alpha’s voice was uncharacteristically soft as he said this. “Her power, unfortunately, _made_ you. It’s never going to not be there.”

Trini laid her hand on Sam’s shoulder. “But it’s _your_ power now,” she said. “You get to decide what it’s for.”

“You’re just trying to make me cry again,” Sam muttered, but she laid her hand over Trini’s briefly.

“Maybe it’ll flush the gold out,” Trini suggested cheerfully.

“If that were the case I’d have been crying gold for the last three days.” Trini withdrew her hand and Sam closed her eyes. “Fair warning,” she murmured. “The last time I tried this I got possessed.”

“We’re here,” Jason promised, and just those two words lifted Sam up a little, like she was being supported on all sides.

And with just the barest whiff of effort, Sam felt a brief discomfort behind her left eye, and then nothing. The itching was gone, and her head even felt lighter, like she’d had a headache she hadn’t noticed until it was gone.

“That was...suspiciously easy,” she said, opening her eyes to Alpha’s scanner.

“It’s gone, though,” he said. “You didn’t imagine it.”

“So...what, I can just use Rita’s power on the fly now?”

Zordon’s face appeared on the wall behind Alpha. “This ordeal has strengthened you, Sam. It’s entirely possible you’ve absorbed Rita’s power into yourself, and made it fully your own.”

Sam touched her pocket, where the power stone sat. It was warm to the touch, but not the burning heat from the first time she’d found it. It was more controlled. More manageable.

“I think you might be onto something,” she said quietly.

* * *

 

Sam’s dad came home that evening, and she flicked her watch on as he entered through the kitchen.

“Hey,” he grunted. Sam lifted a hand in response.

“Hey. Good trip?”

“Yes and no.” He shrugged out of his coat, hanging it over the back of a chair. “Nets snagged on something - after we’d pulled two loads in, thank god. They called sonar to check it out.”

“Anything good?” Sam was only half paying attention, most of her attention on the television.

“Weirdest damn thing - the sonar feedback looks like some kind of metal _dragon_. Like from a few months ago, with that - hey, shit, you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Sam wheezed, attempting to dislodge a popcorn kernel from her throat. “Wrong pipe.” She fished her phone out of her pocket as her dad disappeared into his room, sending out a quick text: _who knows how to scuba dive?_


End file.
